How Much Money Will Heath Ledger’s Terry Gilliam Movie Make?

Now that Heath Ledger's stunning final completed film performance as the Joker has helped The Dark Knight shatter the records for best-ever opening weekend, biggest single-day gross, largest Imax opening, highest number of career home runs, and most hot dogs eaten in one sitting, we focus our attention on the box-office prospects of next year's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, the Terry Gilliam film Ledger had been working on when he died. Given Gilliam's recent track record, certainly no one expects Parnassus to repeat the success of Knight — but isn't it sort of reasonable to assume that it'll make at least a million times more money than the average Terry Gilliam movie?

These days, most of Gilliam's movies make just a brief stop in theaters on their way to DVD. The guy directed Brazil, so we mean no disrespect, but, heck, if you asked Netflix nicely, they'd probably send you Parnassus right now. With the attention on Ledger's tragic, star-making turn in The Dark Knight, though, could it actually be a box-office hit? According to a survey conducted by Fandango, 64 percent of those who bought tickets for Knight through the Website plan to see it again — and 62 percent of those responding said they plan to see it again because of Ledger. And with Johnny Depp (and, to a lesser extent, Colin Farrell and Jude Law) completing the parts of his role he didn't finish in Parnassus, isn't the movie beginning to sound vaguely bankable? We certainly can't wait to see it.

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